


Debauchery

by taylor_tut



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Either Or, M/M, Platonic Cuddling, Sick Character, Sickfic, or could be seen as shance, shalladin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 04:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10712466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: Lance and Pidge are poking around where they shouldn't, and they find a bunch of old vials in the castle. One of them happens to be filled with some kind of alien virus. Of course, it's the one that Lance breaks.





	Debauchery

“Lance, come with me.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Not going to happen.”

“Are you scared?”

“Of Allura? Hell yeah,” Lance replied. “But seriously, Pidge, you need to leave it alone. Allura and Coran let us have free roaming privileges of the castle-ship, so if a door is locked, there’s got to be a reason.” Pidge stood up defiantly and turned away from Lance.

“Well, I’m going whether you come with me or not,” she threatened. Lance crossed his arms and didn’t move from the couch as she left the room, but as more and more moments passed without her turning around and changing her mind, Lance grew anxious, shifting in his seat a few times before finally huffing an irritated sigh.

“Wait for me,” Lance called, trotting after the youngest paladin. 

* * *

“You’re alarmingly good at picking locks,” Lance muttered irritably. “Is there anywhere I can put my stuff where you won’t be able to rifle through it?” 

Pidge seemed to consider that for a moment, still working at the mysterious locked door, and smiled when the lock finally gave in and the door was pushed open. “I’d say no,” she asserted with a cocky smile. Lance sighed again. This kid was going to drive him to an early grave.

As it turned out, the room _was_  locked for good reason. Behind it, there were vials upon vials of cryogenically frozen and stored medications. 

“Holy moley,” Pidge breathed, “This is amazing!” Lance couldn’t help but smile as he watched her bend in front of vials and chemicals, reading their labels with as much excitement as a normal kid might have exhibited in a toy store. But Pidge had never been a normal kid.

“Yeah, yeah; just don’t touch anything,” Lance warned. “I’m sure Allura and Coran already know we’re here and are on their way to kill us.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Pidge brushed him off, “Just let me have a little while longer to look around.”

Lance followed closely behind her, giving her dirty, scolding looks when she reached out to touch things. 

“Lance, stop treating me like a baby,” Pidge argued.

“I’m not. I’m treating you like an overly-excited and clumsy scientist.”

“I’m not clumsy!” she shouted, and as if it were planned, the gesticulation that accompanied the defensive statement knocked over a vial, which shattered on the ground. Pidge’s eyes widened as the liquid pooled around Lance’s shoes, and she bent down to pick up the broken glass.

“Don’t touch it,” Lance instructed, “You’re going to cut yourself. Just go get me a trash can for the glass.” Pidge did as she was told, returning quickly with a small basin. Lance carefully scooped up the shards of the vial, depositing them into the trash can, and almost completed the clean up without incident.

Almost.

“Ow,” he whined as one of the jagged edges sliced his finger, “See? This is why I said we shouldn’t be in here.”

“I’m sorry,” Pidge worried, quickly finding a towel and pressing it to Lance’s bleeding hand. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Lance rolled his eyes, “Just _listen_  to me next time I tell you not to unlock a scary mystery door, huh?” Pidge smiled.

“No promises,” she replied honestly.

* * *

Of course, not all the vials were filled with medicines. Some were filled with cultures of bacteria, and of course the one that Pidge had knocked over seemed to enter Lance’s bloodstream and infect him with some kind of Altean Space Super Cold.

Allura assured him it was harmless, albeit annoying, and eyed him suspiciously when she asked how he could have contracted a disease that has been _eradicated for nearly 1,000 years_ and his only response was to shrug and smile innocently. 

“All I can hope is that this serves as a lesson for anyone,” Allura looked pointedly at Pidge, “who might be poking around in places that they should’t.”

The virus wasn’t horrible. Really, it was no worse than an Earth cold. As such, Lance felt that he shouldn’t ask for a day off training, especially since it was his and Pidge’s debauchery that got him into this situation in the first place. 

But his energy levels were trashed. Lance started to take naps between training and lunch, then between lunch and training, and training and dinner, then would sleep through the night and still wake up feeling exhausted. He didn’t tell the rest of the team–in fact, he was so embarrassed about how winded that the stress of training was making him that he flat-out lied. When they asked where he was disappearing to, he would tell them that he was wrapped up in a really good book, or that he was meditating, or that he was polishing his armor. 

Shiro didn’t believe it for a second.

“Hey, Lance,” he called after the blue paladin as he beelined from the common room where they’d just finished lunch toward his room, “wait up.”

Lance turned around, trying his best to perk up and not look exhausted.

“Shiro, what’s up?” he chirped. 

“How’s your cold?” he asked. Lance flushed in embarrassment.

“It’s fine,” he shrugged. 

“It can be really tough to be so far away from your family when you’re not feeling well,” Shiro probed. 

“Uh, I guess so?” Lance agreed confusedly. “I don’t know, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to think about it. We’ve been training a lot.”

“I know,” Shiro nodded. “That’s why I was thinking–we should watch a movie.”

“A movie?” Lance echoed. He really wasn’t in the mood for that–he just wanted to sleep.

“Yeah, Allura has a collection of weird Altean movies that we could raid. You interested?” And Shiro looked so damn excited and pleased with himself that Lance couldn’t say no. 

“Sure,” Lance smiled, “That sounds like fun.”

Lance didn’t make it past the opening credits before he was asleep leaning against Hunk. Shiro let him sleep through the film, not waking him up until the film had finished and they were ready for evening Lion training. Lance rubbed a hand over his face tiredly and followed the rest of the paladins to the Lions.

* * *

“Lance, you’re quiet,” Shiro noticed, “You okay?”

“Just focusing,” Lance girtted out through clenched teeth. Training was taking his condition _fast_. He was tired still, and now, on top of it, he was shivering. Lance was worried–usually they didn’t fly high enough above the castle to feel a temperature change in just normal Lion training. 

“Why are we so high up?” Lance asked. 

“What do you mean?” Keith replied.

“Seriously, you’re not feeling this? It’s freezing.”

“Toughen up,” Pidge teased, “It’s not that cold.” 

So Lance tried. He couldn’t stop the shivering, nor could he prevent his teeth from chattering, but he stopped complaining about it. He managed to fight through it until they landed back in the hangar, and could finally rest his head against the back of his seat and close his eyes.

He heard the rest of the paladins exiting their Lions, chattering about the training and the promise of dinner, but he couldn’t force himself to get up. He was still so cold, and so tired…

Shrio patted Hunk on the back, praising him for a job well done, and looked confusedly around the room. 

“Where’s Lance?”

The other paladins were silent, glancing around and shrugging. Lance was usually down here enjoying the post-training self-congratulating that was typical of these evenings. 

“I didn’t see him leave his Lion,” Hunk offered. Shiro’s eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“You guys go ahead and start dinner; I’m going to check on him.” Reluctantly, the team left Shiro alone in the room and he climbed into the Blue Lion to find their missing member. “Lance?” he called, eyes resting upon the sleeping boy who was slumped over in his chair. Worry knotted his stomach. “Lance, hey,” he called, shaking his shoulders, “wake up.”

Lance stirred slowly, sluggishly. “Nghh,” he moaned, “M’awake; stop.” His voice sounded rough, and Shiro could hear his breathing whooshing through a tight chest cavity.

“What’s going on?” Shiro demanded, “You sound awful.”

Lance coughed a few times into his elbow, sounding wheezy and breathless. “Just a cold,” Lance replied.

“I’m not so sure,” Shiro argued. “I think we need to get Allura and Coran.”

“No,” Lance fought, shaking his head to try to perk himself up and failing, “I just need to sleep it off.”

Shiro hesitated, his hand ghosting over Lance’s forehead and cheeks, then the back of his neck. “You’re burning up,” he informed. 

“Just let me sleep it off,” Lance insisted. “I’m just gonna go to sleep.”

“Not here, you’re not,” Shiro argued sternly. “If you’re just going to rest, which I maintain is a stupid idea, then you’re at least doing it in a bed.” Lance was absolutely malleable under Shiro’s hands, which worried him. He guided him down the hall, tugging him away when Lance started to turn toward his room. “I’m not leaving you alone,” he explained. “You’re sleeping in my room.”

“You don’t have to–”

“I know,” Shiro interrupted gently. “Just don’t worry about it and sleep, okay?” Lance looked uneasy, lying down in Shiro’s bed, and he tried to take up as little space as possible, pressing himself tightly to the side.

“What are you doing?” Shiro asked.

“I don’t want you to have to sleep in a chair or something just because you’ve got to babysit me,” he explained. 

“It’s not babysitting,” Shiro laughed, but he climbed into the bed beside Lance all the same. “Geez, you’re radiating heat.”

“Sorry,” Lance mumbled.

“Don’t be,” Shiro returned. “Just get some sleep.” Lance was already out like a light.


End file.
